Unidentified men carrying a model of Iran’s first-ever hypersonic missile, Fattah, past a mosque during a gathering to celebrate a failed Iranian attack on Israel, in Tehran, Iran, on April 15, 2024. Photo: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect

October 7, 2024, marked the one-year anniversary of the brutal attack by Hamas on Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis, Jews, and foreign citizens.

One year later, there are still 101 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas, and 60,000 Israelis are still displaced from their homes in northern Israel due to continual rocket fire from Hezbollah.

Enter the Islamic Republic of Iran — and its destructive role as the arsonist of the Middle East.

The Iranian regime — and its obsession with the destruction of Israel — have caused decades of destruction in the Middle East and around the world. Iran’s obsession is symbolized by the “countdown clock” in a square in Tehran, which predicts the destruction of Israel.

In 2015, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted that after 25 years — by 2040 — Israel will no longer exist.

In order to achieve this goal, Iran supports terror proxies throughout the region, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq. Together, they are called “the Axis of Resistance” by Iranian leaders.

Iran’s military strategy toward Israel can be summed up in three words: “ring of fire.”

This refers to the efforts of Iran to provide rockets, missiles, and munitions to its terror proxies that are actively trained by Iran, in order to build a “ring of fire” around the State of Israel, which will ultimately bring about its destruction.

The Hamas onslaught on October 7 — and the constant Hezbollah rocket attacks since (alongside Houthi terrorism and the Hamas-instigated war in Gaza) are the consequences of Iran’s perverse strategy.

Since the war began in October 2023, we have seen this “ring of fire” activated in full force. This includes the firing of more than 12,000 rockets and drones from Hezbollah in Lebanon, more than 19,000 rockets from Hamas in Gaza, and hundreds of ballistic missiles from Iran itself, all being fired at civilians in Israel. In addition, the Houthis in Yemen have also fired more than 200 missiles and drones at Israel.

It’s also important to remember that Iran has done everything possible to sabotage the hopes for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

With the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, there was a real hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians through the two-state solution. Yet, Iran, the arsonist of the Middle East, refused to let that happen. Hamas and other Palestinian terror organizations, backed and largely funded by Iran, embarked on a campaign of terror to blow up those hopes for peace.

Between 1993 and 2005, Hamas and other proxy terror organizations carried out more than 150 suicide bombings in Israeli cities —  on buses, in restaurants and in shopping malls — killing well over 1,000 Israeli civilians.

The leadership of Iran works actively throughout the Middle East to achieve its ambitions for the destruction of Israel. To that end, Iran is determined to maintain Syria as another base of operations against Israel.

The tragedy of the Syrian civil war is a prime example.

During the civil war in Syria that began in 2011, Iran provided extensive support to prop up the brutal dictator, Bashar al-Assad, a close ally of the Iranian regime.

Iran provided the Syrian regime with an endless supply of ammunition, weapons, billions of dollars in economic support, and tens of thousands of fighters from Hezbollah and other proxies.

The human cost of Iran’s support for the Syrian regime couldn’t be worse: more than 500,000 dead Syrians and the creation of more than five million refugees.

In an article published in The Atlantic in 2018, Middle East expert Karim Sadjadpour wrote:

Distilled to its essence, Tehran’s steadfast support for Assad is not driven by the geopolitical or financial interests of the Iranian nation, nor the religious convictions of the Islamic Republic, but by a visceral and seemingly inextinguishable hatred for the state of Israel.”

The time has come for the international community to clearly see the motivations that inform Iran’s behavior and to hold Iran  accountable for its deadly agenda.

Until then, peace will remain a distant dream for both Israelis and Palestinians, with more unnecessary suffering to be played out for the people of the entire region.

Bob Feferman is Community Relations Director for the Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley in South Bend.